kristof Gabriel carina van hooymissen [my ancestor lieven once brewed the beer saint-michael]

SAPTA CHATUSTHAYA
Shanti-Chatusthaya.
smtA fAE t s K hA yEmEt fAE tct y

Samata shantih sukham hasyam iti shantichatusthayam.

Samata

The basis of internal peace is samata, the capacity of receiving with a calm and equal mind all the attacks and appearances of outward things, whether pleasant or unpleasant, ill-fortune and good-fortune, pleasure and pain, honour and ill-repute, praise and blame, friendship and enmity, sinner and saint, or, physically, heat and cold etc. There are two forms of samata, passive and active, samata in reception of the things of the outward world and samata in reaction to them.

(1) Passive


Passive samata consists of three things

 

Titiksha

EtEt odAsFntA nEtErEt smtA
titiksha, udasinata, natih iti samata

Titiksha is the bearing firmly of all contacts pleasant or un- pleasant, not being overpowered by that which is painful, not being carried away by that which is pleasant. Calmly and firmly to receive both and hold and bear them as one who is stronger, greater, vaster than any attack of the world, is the attitude of titiksha.

Udasinata
Udasinata is indifference to the dwandwas or dualities; it means literally being seated above, superior to all physical and mental touches. The udasina, free from desire, either does not feel the touch of joy & grief, pleasure and pain, liking and disliking, or he feels them as touching his mind and body, but not himself, he being different from mind and body and seated above them.

Nati
Nati is the submission of the soul to the will of God; its ac- ceptance of all touches as His touches, of all experience as His play with the soul of man. Nati may be with titiksha, feeling the sorrow but accepting it as God’s will, or with udasinata ́, rising superior to it and regarding joy and sorrow equally as God’s working in these lower instruments, or with ananda, receiving everything as the play of Krishna and therefore in itself delightful. The last is the state of the complete Yogin, for by this continual joyous or anandamaya namaskara to God constantly practised we arrive eventually at the entire elimination of grief, pain etc, the entire freedom from the dwandwas, and find the Brahmananda in every smallest, most trivial, most apparently discordant detail of life & experience in this human body. We get rid entirely of fear and suffering; Anan- dam Brahmano vidva ́n na bibheti kutaschana. We may have to begin with titiksha and udasinata but it is in this ananda that we must consummate the siddhi of samata. The Yogin receives victory and defeat, success and ill-success, pleasure and pain, honour and disgrace with an equal, a sama ananda, first by buddhi-yoga, sep- arating himself from his habitual mental & nervous reactions & insisting by vichara on the true nature of the experience itself and of his own soul which is secretly anandamaya, full of the sama ananda in all things. He comes to change all the ordinary values of experience; amangala reveals itself to him as mangala, defeat & ill-success as the fulfilment of God’s immediate purpose and a step towards ultimate victory, grief and pain as concealed and perverse forms of pleasure. A stage arrives even, when physical pain itself, the hardest thing for material man to bear, changes its nature in experience and becomes physical ananda; but this is only at the end when this human being, imprisoned in matter, subjected to mind, emerges from his subjection, conquers his mind and delivers himself utterly in his body, realising his true anandamaya self in every part of the adha ́ra.

Sapta Chatusthaya 5
(2) Active
It is this universal or sama ananda in all experiences which
constitutes active samata, and it has three parts or stages,
rs FEtrAn d iEt svA n d
Rasah, pritir anandah [iti sarvanandah]
Rasa is the appreciative perception of that guna, that a ́swada, taste and quality which the Ishwara of the lila perceives in each different object of experience (vishaya) and for the enjoyment of which He creates it in the lila. Pritih is the pleasure of the mind in all rasa, pleasant or unpleasant, sweet or bitter. Ananda is the divine bhoga superior to all mental pleasure with which God en- joys the rasa; in ananda the opposition of the dualities entirely ceases.

Shanti
Only when samata is accomplished, can shanti be perfect in the system. If there is the least disturbance or trouble in the mentality, we may be perfectly sure that there is a disturbance or defect in the samata. For the mind of man is complex and even when in the buddhi we have fixed ourselves entirely in udasinata or nati, there may be revolts, uneasinesses, repinings in other parts. The buddhi, the manas, the heart, the nerves (prana), the very bodily case must be subjected to the law of samata.
Shanti may be either a vast passive calm based on uda ́sinata or a vast joyous calm based on nati. The former is apt to associate itself with a tendency to inaction and it is therefore in the latter that our Yoga must culminate.

Sukha
Sukham is the complete relief & release from duhkha, from vishada, which comes by the fulfilment of samata and shanti. The perfected Yogin has never in himself any touch of sorrow, any tendency of depression, cloud or internal repining and weariness, but is always full of a sattwic light and ease.

Hasya
Hasyam is the active side of sukham; it consists in an active internal state of gladness and cheerfulness which no adverse expe- rience mental or physical can trouble. Its perfection is God’s stamp and seal on the siddhi of the samata. It is in our internal being the image of the smile of Srikrishna playing, ba ́ lavat, as the eternal balaka and kumara in the garden of the world. 

From Sri Aurobindo's book : The Record of Yoga 1 & 2